BioWare looking for Dragon Age 3 staff

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 20 May, 2011

The story continues.

BioWare has rubber stamped development of Dragon Age III.

The role-playing specialists are looking for staff to work on the game.

"I'm looking for exceptional environment artists to join me at #BioWare Edmonton, Canada to work on #DragonAge3 #gamejobs #jobs #3D #artists" reads a tweet by Alistair McNally, senior director of creative development at BioWare (spotted by IGN).

Confirmation of the game comes as no surprise – the Dragon Age series is hugely successful.

Dragon Age II topped the UK all-formats chart upon its March 2011 release.

Eurogamer's Dragon Age II review rolled an 8/10. "An enduring classic? Not quite," wrote Dan Whitehead. "A satisfying epic? Absolutely."

But the game proved devisive. In a Dragon Age II interview with Eurogamer, lead designer Mike Laidlaw said the developer has "ideas" for a sequel and protagonist Hawke.

What about multiplayer?

"Long-term that's something we have to consider," he said, "because obviously multiplayer is something that's a huge undertaking, it presents technical difficulty. And frankly it's something that if done, has to be done really well, otherwise it feels very tacked on. So we'll have to make any decision about that within that context."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (37) Latest comment 7 months ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • dagas #1 9 months ago

    Guess they figured they need more staff to make sure they have enough material in the game they won't have to reuse every locale 55 times. I hope they fix that before trying multi-player.

  • Inmediasress #2 9 months ago

    So now we get a Multiplayer hack&slash like diablo with "immersive" gameplay just marvelous.
    God knows bioware died for me and a probably for a lot of their fans.
    Too bad DA2 managed to sell enough to warrant a third but then again people are sheep and of course who wouldn't want to make a sequel to a game that's took 6 months to develpoe and sold quite well.
    The time/effort ratio is great for them but othervise the product is like a big pile of turd.
    Talk about ruining your own IP.
    Oh well maybe there will be a Witcher 3 in the future.

  • Gambit1977 #3 9 months ago

    Oh god how much more linear can they make it?? It's a shame Bioware discovered such a successful formula that we'll never see a proper successor to Baldurs Gate :(

  • sarcasmoidosis #4 9 months ago

    "I'm looking for exceptional environment artists that can make 1 dungeon and copy paste it 100 times"

    Fixed.

  • Xboxfanuk #5 9 months ago

    The great thing about Dragon Age now is that it extends into other mediums like comics and the upcoming web movie staring Flelica Day.

    I think the new streamlined direction is perfect the games success on console as well. Frankly I never liked the slow almost turned based battles. I prefer something with tactics, but real time like an MMO.

  • Darren #6 9 months ago

    The benchmark for fantasy RPGs has now been significantly raised by The Witcher 2, BioWare, so try and make Dragon Age III a little more interesting, huh, in terms of setting, dialogue and story?

  • Hamflank #7 9 months ago

    How about a Baldur's Gate 3 instead?

  • wyp100 #8 9 months ago

    @Hamflank

    BioWare/EA does not own the Baldur's Gate IP. Atari does.

    /cry

  • NewbieZilla #9 9 months ago

    Dragon Age 2 does pretty much end in the middle of events. One of the worst endings to a game I've seen. This is coming from someone who loves BioWare too.

  • MightyMouse #10 9 months ago

    "But the game proved devisive"

    Divisive!

  • Hamflank #11 9 months ago

    @wyp100

    /weep

    Surely all them Riccitello dollars can buy them the IP. I'd kill for a proper revisit to Faerūn.

  • jimr9999us #12 9 months ago

    Oh! Me, me, me, Pick me Bioware please!

    Wtf-ever.

  • username84 #13 9 months ago

    I hope "exceptional environment artists" means more than one. Would be nice to not wander about THE SAME F*@KING PLACE for 40 hours. This totally ruined Dragon Age 2 for me and I think a lot of people.

  • matrim83 #14 9 months ago

    I know how to use copy and paste. I am as good as hired arent I?

  • anomagnus #15 9 months ago

    Jesus christ, the game probably isnt even in pre-production, isnt it a bit early to begin bashing it?

    Wait, its a gaming forum, with mostly rpg fans. Why start bitching about 3, why don't you get your bitch on about DA4? I mean, you're already going to hate DA3 because it causes disease among young children, so get your hate ready for DA4 instead.

  • Inmediasress #16 9 months ago

    @anomagnus

    You know the same people like you, said similar thigns when DA2 began to look shit.
    We have seen the first news total mass effectisation people said that's not how it is take a better look.
    Then comes game play footage and videos it still looks and feels shit and bland.-They say wait for the demo it's going to be totally different.
    Demo comes out I cancel preorder immediately shit hits the fan.-People like you say it's just a demo you can't judge the final product it's going to be awsome.
    Final product comes out it's just as shit as predicted.-People like you say it's awsome anybody who says otherwise is an idiot and doesn't know rpgs and anyway Bioware is the best so STFU.

    See a pattern there???

  • Haunted_Tree #17 9 months ago

    Based on the simplification and repetition of DA2, I guess the next one will be a match-3 game ...

  • CptSupermarket #18 9 months ago

    Sub it out to CD Projekt Red. Job Done.

    edit: Also, stop posting shit and get on with reviewing witcher 2
    Edited by 1 at 20/05/11 @ 11:09

  • addugg #19 9 months ago

    Did the job listing for "Timelord" get filled? If it did great, because now they can take the five years needed to make it and it'll only seem like two years has passed.

  • Vlad27145 #20 9 months ago

    @Hamflank
    @wyp100

    Would you seriously want the current day Bioware doing a Baldur's gate Game? I'd rather have Obsidian take a stab at it.

  • geeza2020 #21 9 months ago

    DA2 was a stinking turd of an RPG. The story was boring, the choices you made had little or no consequences on the outcome of the overall plot and the game mechanics themselves (combat, inventory, UI) were just rubbish. I mean even the menu for gods sake. In DA1 you had this intricately designed and details book with all your journal entries, codex and quests displayed in a beautiful way. Then DA2 comes along and pretty much just shoe-horned ME2's menu system in and it stuck out like a sore thumb, totally unfitting with the fantasy world they were trying to portray. And as people mentioned above, then theres the repeating environments, ridiculously easy battles interspersed with massive difficulty spikes, it was just a mess - and all this leads up to my drawn out point, that I wont be buying DA3, no matter what Bioware say about it. Bioware are finished to me, as soon as ME3 is out.

  • username84 #22 9 months ago

    @anomagnus

    Diseased children?

  • GozuTennai #23 9 months ago

    Turn the life support machine off bioware. Its time.

  • Daikon #24 9 months ago

    lead designer Mike Laidlaw said the developer has "ideas" for a sequel and protagonist Hawke.

    Not interested.

  • Spook #25 9 months ago

    Just to go against the grain (and likely build up some negs!) I didn't mind DA2, actually enjoyed it more then the first one (played both on Xbox, not PC) so I'm happy to hear the news. Yes the repeating on scenes was a bit boring, but I enjoyed the story it was more sword and sorcery instead of epic fantasy. Overall I thought the game was better then the first (style, combat, looks, pretty much everything). And I prefer the more action based combat system opposed to the Baldur's Gate stop-start system (which is/was good, but it's a bit of a old hat now days, same goes for the J-RPG combat system of taking turns).

    As for the comments on the quick turn around, err hello? If you were/are a fan of Bioware games then you should expect quick turn around, not moan about it! Look at Baldur's Gate. It came out in 1998, the expansion in 1999, BG 2 in 2000, BG2 expansion in 2001, Neverwinter Nights in 2002, Neverwinter Nights Expansions in 2003!

  • Xardan #26 9 months ago

    How about a new franchise Bioware?

  • apoc_reg #27 9 months ago

    I suggest they bulster the location designers, depth department and not being crap like 2 dept

  • Rack #28 9 months ago

    By all means sub the writing out to CD Projekt Red but keep the tech in house. DA2 is roughly ten million times more efficient in terms of system resources.

  • monkeywithnoeyes #29 9 months ago

    so is dlc coming for DA2 then? i wasnt going to invest in it till a GOTY edition hit

  • anomagnus #30 9 months ago

    @Inmediasress

    I do see a pattern. I see asshats like you, the supposed gate keepers to gaming perfection, bitch and moan about how every game that expands beyonds its horizons is nothing more than a sop to the great unwashed. I see arrogant fourm lurkers like you bitch because a company attempts something different, something as shocking as trying to update the tired mechanics of RPGs, and getting so pissed when the game actually does well.

    Here's a fucking shock for you. Your view of DA2, thats a fucking opinion. Its not a fucking fact. I enjoyed DA2, in fact, i enjoyed it, more than i'm enjoying the witcher 2 at the moment. That might change as i finish the game, but right now, the voice acting is such a distraction, along with, what at best can be described as a fan fic level of writing, is making me cringe.

    Its also interesting to note the reviews, from professionals, and not pathetic forum critiques (unable to understand scales, where something is either 0 or 10) doesn't seem to match your own, LOFTY view. Nor do the sales figures.

    You can bitch all you fucking want, but for every fucking loser like you that doesn't buy the game, they'll have others to buy it. The real people who win, are people like me, who'll enjoy the game.

    You remind me so much of the fucking whingers in WoW, that used to hate, with every fibre of their being, the thought of casual gamers.





    Edited by 1 at 20/05/11 @ 14:45

  • Inmediasress #31 9 months ago

    @anomagnus

    Oh well then that makes us even yours is only an opinon as well and it does seem to me that you love to incite flame wars so lets just leave it at that.

  • username84 #32 9 months ago

    GEEEEEK WAAAARS!!!!!! (see above)

  • Gunship #33 9 months ago

    DA2 has so far sold around 1.5m copies (ignore whatever you read before about 2m, that was just the sell-IN figure, ie what was shipped to stores). It should be selling at least as well as DA1 (which did 4m), given that they dumbed it specifically for that reason (losing half their fans in the process). BioWare said their target was 10m, so hardly an "epic" there.

    BioWare has ruled out a "180 degree design change" for DA3 (Gameinformer interview), so this 3D artist they're hiring better not be looking for good job security...

  • sabbede #34 9 months ago

    I'd love a sequel to Origins!
    I'll puke if there's a sequel to DA2.

  • Murton #35 9 months ago

    The former role-playing specialists are looking for staff to work on the game.

    There, fixed it for you EG. The last RPG to come out of Bioware was NWN and that was a long, long time ago, it's been all action, all the time since then.

    See the job posting is largely for artists, which suggests that after two games using a very limited pool of assets player feedback has been taken on board and the third installment won't feel quite as familiar all the time. Unless of course the artists were among the job losses following the completion of DA2 and it's now time to replace them ready for production of DA3.

    On a side note, I'm looking forward to the day where Bioware has alienated all of its fans to the point where it struggles for sales and is forced to do hire work making sequels for Obsidian's IPs in a perverse role reversal of Bioware's glory days, the sad part being that this isn't incredibly far fetched if the drop in sales between DA:o and DA2 is anything to go by and SW:TOR goes the same way as every other new MMO of the last five years.

  • ax1om #36 9 months ago

    why are they hiring temps?? they already have fully functional dungeon from DA2... I hope we'll get "deliver the bodyparts" and "want a sandwich" too. Can't wait til next year =)

  • Carshald #37 7 months ago

    Ok wth is up with you haters.... for the record dont hate on bioware because you idiots think DA2 sucks, its EA's fault i read that alot of places the game was pushed because of sales and sht... no offence to all you little cry babies... like some others said, I ENJOYED DA2!... If you ppl rlly were paying attention when playing the game you would see the truth behind DA2 but why would you narrowminded kids even do that?.. I for one understand that bioware was forced to push the game... if EA hanging on bioware and breathing down their necks about releasing it who wouldnt screw up huh? Even if DA2 was short and alot of the places was reused... SO WHAT!?! Geezuz.. look instead at the newer and more smooth game mechanics... I love the fact that the whole game took a step forward and became a bit more fast paced during combat. And wth why you all thinking mulitplayer huh? I'm a DA fan and i dont believe there's gonna be a multiplayer for now... hell bioware might proof me wrong, but seriously you really think they'll make DA3 with multiplayer elements? Its clearly not ment to be either co-op or multiplayer. I'm not saying i would mind it but im just being realistic, the way DA's mechanics works you cant make it multiplayer.. wtf you gonna do during combat while you bring up you display tree huh? wait for the other 3 idiots to make up their minds on what to do? plus if you play with 3 idiots you dont even know who just does random sht without knowing sht about the game where's the fun in that? the whole mechanics arent meant for that.. geez wtf is wrong with you ppl these days -.- thinking every 2nd or 3rd gamer nowadays thinks they're a critic..
    Edited by 1 at 12/08/11 @ 01:19